Although flying automobiles have captured the imagination for generations, a viable flying car has not been successfully introduced. At present, although construction and materials have reduced automobile weight, automotive safety and smog regulations require a car to be heavier than a similarly sized aircraft. It seems a daunting task to produce an automobile that also has suitable qualities for flight. Motorcycle construction and weight is a more suitable match for a flying vehicle or combined land/air vehicle, hence the three-wheel approach described herein.
While driving on the ground, wings are detrimental. The wings produce lift when such lift undesirably destabilizes the land vehicle. The wings are highly subject to damage. Also, land vehicle traffic lanes on roads are too narrow to accommodate winged vehicles. Thus, it is desirable to have the wings transition between a deployed flight position and a retracted land travel position. Numerous examples exist of hinged wings, especially for aircraft storage. Many such designs date from aircraft carrier operations during World War II. An example would be the U.S. Navy Corsair.
Additional examples have shown up in military and non-military aircraft since that time, including the F-111, Tomcat and the Terrafugia. While the Tomcat and F-111 were swinging wings, the Corsair and Terrafugia were folding wings. Each have hinge mechanisms that take significant loads from the wing during flight, and consequently have to be very robust. Even with this, there are maintenance issues with the swing wings of the F-111 and the Tomcat.
The present invention describes a wing hinge mechanism that allows a wing to swing out from a retracted position to a deployed position, but then has features that allow the main forces of the wing loading to bypass the hinge while in flight. This keeps the hinge fairly small and light, which is important to flying vehicles, and prevents the extra maintenance of hinges that suffer wing load conditions during normal use.